Liberals have lost their patriotism
Come November, we shouldn’t be surprised if many ordinary citizens opt for churlish nativism over a politics devoid of love of country. Liberals desperately need to get it back.
I came of age in the 1980s and 1990s in a Democratic Party and a social milieu that was unabashedly patriotic. To be sure, political liberals back then could be critical of America’s past and present, but most saw our country as an imperfect nation aspiring toward but often falling short in living up to its own high ideals. The dominant zeitgeist of the political right was dangerously nativist and insufficiently self-reflective.
President Bill Clinton, on whose campaign I worked in 1992, famously pronounced at his first inaugural speech, “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.” Young liberals in those days were animated by a form of American exceptionalism that elevated the idea of pluralism. In my twenties I wore a T-shirt broadcasting the American motto e pluribus unum—"out of many, one.” This was liberal patriotism.
Yet this center-left, glass-half-full narrative of our national experiment has increasingly yielded to a withering appraisal of American life, one that is rapidly becoming a self-fulling prophecy.
Today’s liberals rarely express patriotic sentiment in public, abandoning their civic voice to a far left that holds America in contempt, which in turn generates a politics that is both defeatist in tone and alienating to ordinary Americans. A nation that thinks less of itself will become less of itself. Mainstream liberals badly need to rediscover their patriotic spirit.
When beloved actress Betty White died at the age of 99, my wife began rewatching old episodes of The Golden Girls, a mid-1980s sitcom about four aging women who lived together and experienced the highs and lows of their golden years. In one episode, the strong-willed Dorothy lectured her Italian-born mother, Sophia, on the meaning of America.
“When I was a little girl,” Dorothy stated, “you told me how much it meant to you when you came here to America for the first time. Do you remember what you thought of when you first saw the Statue of Liberty holding up her torch of freedom? … Ma, you taught me to love this country. … You were the first one who put an American flag in my hand.”
I was instantly struck at how quaint this monologue was in today’s cultural context, especially coming from a show that was on the vanguard of such social issues as gay rights and sexual harassment. Sadly, this kind of flagrant patriotic sentiment would be considered cringe in today’s liberal circles.
A 2023 Gallup poll found that national pride on the left has precipitously declined in the past two decades. In 2003, 65 percent of Americans identifying as Democrats felt “extreme pride” in their country; by 2023 it was 29 percent. Only 18 percent of those aged 18 to 34 indicated that they were “extremely” patriotic, a steep decline from 85 percent in 2013. “Party identification remains the greatest demographic differentiator in expressions of national pride,” stated Gallup, “and Republicans have been consistently more likely than Democrats and independents to express pride in being American.”
On a recent drive in West Virginia, I noticed American flags outside many homes — even on those in economically depressed coal-mining towns, where people could be forgiven for feeling their country had abandoned them. When we returned to our neighborhood in North Potomac, Md., an economically thriving, politically blue area, I counted one American flag in four blocks, unsurprisingly mounted on the doorway of an Eastern European refugee who fled a repressive Soviet republic.
So inured had I become to the lack of patriotic sentiment in my neck of the woods that I found it positively inspiring in May of this year when fraternity brothers at UNC Chapel Hill rehoisted the American flag on the campus quad after radical activists had replaced Old Glory with a Palestinian flag. The young men locked arms and refused to budge as protestors reportedly hurled bottles, rocks and insults.
Why have liberals become less patriotic?
Some blame an American public that elected Donald Trump and social factors such as persistent economic inequality. Others cite social media echo chambers that extol, for example, a letter from Osama Bin Laden justifying terrorism against the U.S. Others point to the rise of an oppressed-oppressor ideology that sees America as pervasively racist. Indeed, when universities adopt policies that deem such comments as “America is the land of opportunity” and “Everyone can succeed in this society” as “microaggressions,” it should surprise no one that many students adopt negative attitudes toward their own country.
A few Democrats understand that a politics of self-loathing will never win the day. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, both Democrats elected in 2022, successfully ran on liberal policy agendas that emphasized freedom and American exceptionalism. President Biden himself may still represent the old flag-waving sensibility, but the larger progressive political class that accompanied him to power exudes little passion and, judging by the president’s recent demoralizing speech at Morehouse College, has brought the president down with them.
Come November, we shouldn’t be surprised if many ordinary citizens opt for churlish nativism over a politics devoid of love of country. Liberals desperately need to get it back.
David Bernstein is the founder of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values and author of “Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews.”